Martin Greenberg: The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

And the Unicorns? They screamed. In outrage. In fury. They reared up, muscles rippling on their hind legs, horns no longer turned in casual cruelty against each other, as they faced this unexpected intruder.

Maggie hardly seemed to notice.

But I knew that dying here was pretty much death. It didn’t matter if we weren’t in the city; it didn’t matter if we weren’t in reality. Had Gran told me that? I couldn’t remember. I’d try later.

Gran’s knife in hand, I leapt in after Maggie, moving faster than I’d ever moved in my life. A horn hit the blade, and the blade was no longer invisible.

I expected the impact to knock the weapon out of my hand; it’s not as if I use weapons, much. But that didn’t happen. Instead? The horn gave . The knife passed through it. The Unicorn’s scream of rage gave way to a scream of what sounded-I swear-like mortified pain.

They had hooves, cloven hooves, and those should have been their weapon of choice. Would have done a damn sight more damage. But they didn’t seem to clue in, and I wasn’t about to tell them what to do.

I thought Maggie would; she’s like my Gran that way. But even if we’d started out hunting Unicorns, they weren’t on her radar at the moment. And I couldn’t see what was, but I could guess.

I would have been half right.

The Unicorns drew back when I approached; the knife was literally glowing, and a faint trace of black ran down its edge. I thought it was blood, but the wrong colour. It probably was. Unicorn horns are tricky.

But they didn’t approach us again, and no one was stupid enough to try the horn against the knife. I shadowed Maggie-literally. I knew that if I was too far away, they’d fall on her like jackals. Like really beautiful, really delicate, jackals.

She made her way to the tree they had been circling around, and I discovered a second thing about Unicorns. They can look an awful lot like men.

Or a man.

White haired, but youthful, tall, slender, garbed in something that would probably pass any fashion test an enterprising highschooler would set-except for that horn. Middle of the forehead. Dead centre. Glistening as it drank moonlight.

Maggie was mad. Not angry, which I’m used to.

Mad mother? Not a good thing. I tried to call out to her. No, I did . But she was beyond listening.

And in a second, I was beyond trying. Her eyes were better than mine. If she was seeing with her eyes at all.

Because beyond the man, was a girl. Bruised eyes. Bruised lips. Skin the white that skin goes when fear has overtaken almost everything else. A lot of skin; exposed and framed by shredded fabric. Might have been a shirt, once. Or the top of a dress.

School-girl, I thought. Maybe. She seemed so young to me as I looked at her, I couldn’t think straight. I had never been that young. Gran said I was born old.

Should’ve been a hint.

But Gran could have told me that Unicorns are rapists.

We split up the minute the Unicorn turned. His eyes were a startling shade of blue, clear and bright in the night sky. He looked beyond us, for just a moment; saw what must have been there-the gathering of his pack.

His hands fell away from the girl as he shoved her, hard, against tree-bark. Her hands gripped the tree as she tried to meld with it. Her eyes were dark, normal eyes. Her hair was dark and dishevelled.

He looked at Maggie.

He looked at me.

I held the dagger. I don’t think I have ever wanted to kill. He looked at Maggie.

He looked at me.

I held the dagger. I don’t think I have ever wanted to kill anything so badly in my life. He laughed. He could sense it.

But Maggie moved not toward him, but toward the girl. He wasn’t her concern. No, I thought, he was mine. Mother creates life. Crone sees its end.

I’ll stay until you get back .

I lunged with the dagger as he lunged with his horn. He narrowly avoided losing it, and I side-stepped. I’m not much of a fighter, but I was fast enough; it’s kind of hard to really get into a tussle when your pants have dropped past your butt.

I wondered if this was what naked men actually looked like. Which was my stupid thought for the evening, and it almost cost me my arm.

The shadows were dancing at my back. The others were waiting. But they were a bit of a cowardly lot, when it came down to that; they knew what the knife could do, and they were willing to wait and see.

I could have despised them more if I tried really hard. But mostly, I was trying to stay alive.

Losing battle. What had my Gran said? She wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t raised to be one either. His horn grazed my thigh, and the threads of my jeans unravelled at its touch, as if they were all trying to avoid the contact. I bled a bit.

He hit me again, and I bled more.

He wasn’t laughing, but his eyes were glittering with rage. I had denied him something, and he intended to make me pay.

I would have died there.

I would have died had it not been for Maggie. At least I thought it was Maggie who came for me, Maggie who touched my shoulder, my wrist, my dagger arm.

But when Maggie took the dagger from my slowing hands, I knew I’d been wrong. Because Maggie was the mother, and she couldn’t wield this knife.

The Unicorn’s blue eyes widened, and he lost his form-which is to say, he reverted. It was certainly easier to look at him. Harder to look at the girl he’d had pinned to the tree a few wounds back.

She wasn’t wearing much. But she didn’t need to. She was utterly, completely beautiful in the stark night, and her expression was one that will haunt my nightmares for years.

She didn’t speak a word.

Not a word of accusation. Not a word that spoke of betrayal. Nothing at all that made her seem like a wronged victim, or like any victim.

Crone sees life’s end?

Not like this . She used the knife as if she’d been born with it in her hands. And he bled a lot; she wasn’t kind. Or quick. Or even merciful.

But he was very much alone, in the end. Packs are like that.

Later, I joined Maggie. Or Maggie joined us. The girl was holding the knife and her breasts rose and fell as lungs gave in to exertion, which was very distracting. Maggie had taken a sweater from her shoulders, leaving herself with a thin, black t-shirt. She put the sweater around the girl’s shoulders in silence. Like a mother. Her hands were shaking.

They looked at each other, and then the girl looked down at the knife almost quizzically.

“It’s yours,” I told her.

“You’re giving this to me?”

“No,” I replied. “It was always yours.”

She looked at it, and I handed her its sheath. She looked at that two. Her hands were shaking. “Did I kill him?”

I nodded.

“Good.” And then her eyes started to film over. “You know, he said he loved me?”

I nodded quietly.

“And I believed him.”

Before I could stop myself, I told her-in as gentle a voice as I could, “You had to.”

“No, I didn’t.”

But she did. Because she was the maiden. I could see it in her clearly. Could see it; was horribly, selfishly glad that I would never be the maiden. I wasn’t certain that she would stay that way, either.

“He was a Unicorn,” I told her, after a pause.

“He was an asshole,” she said, spitting. Like a cat.

“That too.”

She gave me an odd look. “How did you know?”